Country Hopping

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Uh oh, can feel this is gonna be a long one! Am just back from Iguazu Falls and I´ve got soooooo much to say u might get bored sorry!!

Okay, I now wrote that 3 days ago and still have had no luck getting photos up, ggrrrrr!!! so am just gonna post this without them and hopefully get them up asap 😊

So, as I´ve said in previous blogs, we´d been planning to go to Iguazu Falls ever since we arrived and decided to take a long weekend this week to go on a ´mini holiday´ to Brazil. The town we were staying in was 6 hours away (roughly) by long-distance coach, so I got picked up at 6.30am on Friday morning to be taken to the bus terminal. Although saying that, I had heard from some people that it was 4 hours and others 10 hours so we weren´t really sure what to expect!! Long-distance coaches seem to be the main method of transportation between the various countries in South America, well along with flying but obviously that´s mega expensive. The terminal looks just like a big train station, lined with heaps of shops, all selling exactly the same thing of course, typical Paraguay!! Honestly there´s more Optical shops just in my street than I´ve ever seen in my life, downtown there´s even 7 in a row, you´d think they´d have the sense to sell something different!!

The bus journey wasn´t as bad as I was expecting to be honest, the seats are big and comfyish like long distance aeroplanes, and I suppose I eventually got into the triple bill of Spanish war films!! Even on these huge coaches where we´re sitting upstairs almost blocked off from the world outside, you still get people hopping on trying to sell stuff! So I did try my first ´chipa´, a traditional Paraguayan food that I had somehow managed to aviod trying so far. It´s a sort of cheesy bread in the shaped of a dough ring that looks nice and soft but is actually quite hard. Sounds likeable enough but it was disgusting! It felt like eating pure rubber, especially when it squeaks horribly against your teeth!! It´s a big thing in Paraguay though, there are countless men/women wandering around with huge bread baskets on their heads calling ´Chipa! Chipa!´ and some even have loudspeakers, which is what I´m woken up with at 6am every morning...

Anyways enough about the bus! After much stop-the-bus playing, ipod listening and cracker eating we eventually arrived at the border, our first of many over the weekend. Gets annoying having to get stamped out of every country then stamped into the next 2 minutes down the road, plus customs things to fill in etc. Eventually arrived in Foz do Iguazu (the town our hotel was in) and had to change our watches forward after just jumping on the bus, seemed so weird!

You´ll never guess what our hotel was called. I was almost physically sick, honestly. The Turrance Green Hotel. Argh! How freakin typical is that!!! So i didn´t exactly enjoy our hotel experience funnily enough!!! meh!

Weirdly enough, considering in Asuncion itself I never see anyone I know and the fact that we´d just entered Brazil for kind of the first time, when we were sitting eating dinner we saw a familiar face wandering past! It was two of the teachers from the Anglo, quite spooky we ended up in the same hotel on the same weekend though. That night we had no Brazilian money so we just stayed in the hotel and, shock horror, ploughed our way through the hotel´s cocktail menu! It actually was good fun to all be staying together cos it felt like we were on holiday.

Then, Saturday was time for the falls woohoo! I woke up soooo excited but it was absolutely chucking it down, typical eh!! When we all set off on our trek to get to the falls it was actually quite cool to be drenched through in the middle of a huge rainfall in the jungle, all of us with our sexy waterproofs on! Never thought I´d get excited over insects though, lol! But there was heaps to see, brightly coloured snails (yes ORANGE kirsten!!), a really cute monkey, a toucan (one of those bird with the big yellow beaks), these looooooong stripy centipede things, furry red and black caterpillars and a real live stick insect haha! And these animals that we couldn´t decide if they were aardvarks or anteaters but eventually found out they were coatis. Didn´t help that our ´english speaking guide´ (who we´d specifically paid for by the way) had never spoke a word of english in his life!! Thankfully he spoke slowly though so I surprisingly found myself understanding him.

At first sight of the falls I was amazed by the sheer size of them... little did I know there was much more to see! Along the walk there were various viewpoints, so all my photos are so similar, just a wee bitty closer each time!! We eventually reached the end, where there´s a sort of long platform that brings you a bitty closer to the Devil´s Throat, the largest collection of falls. The view from the end was simply breathtaking - even though the rain was pouring down it didn´t take anything away from the sheer enormity and the feeling of awe at such a sight. The force of the falls and the colossal volume of water flowing through them means the foot of the falls are engulfed by a huge cloud of vapour, which rises to cover over half of the length of the falls. This often results in a number of rainbows, but, alas it wasn´t to be.

After scaling the panoramic elevator and viewing the falls from a height (thank god I´ve never been scared of heights) we visited the shop to buy any overpriced souvenirs. I´d sent postcards the previous week which had pictures of the falls on them, the pictures on them seem so rubbish now compared to the ones I´ve seen now!!

Then we went to visit Itapu Dam, which actually I almost forgot to write about lol. To be fair, it is Paraguay´s only remotely touristy-like attraction, so we had to visit it I guess. After watching a DVD about how amazing the dam is, the ins and outs of building it, and how ´generous´ the river is, we eventually got taken to the dam itself and were a bit like ´Oh. Well, ...its...erm...big...´ To be fair the size was impressive and all but we were kind of expecting at least a little water! Think they´d forgotten to switch it on that day! But we were all thinking, ´oh well, at least there´s the fireworks tonight,´ as we were going to the show that the dam puts on every friday and saturday night. Looking back, I guess we should have been a tad suspicious when all along it was called ´The Show of Lights and Sounds´ but all we could think about was fireworks! When we got there that night, we got a talk from two important looking people, telling us how special the show would be tonight since it was some national holiday and ´World Tourist Day´ i think, then we got shown yet another video about how great the dam is. Then the lights went down, dramatic music blared through the speakers, somebody switched on a torch on the dam itself and we all naively sat with our cameras at the ready for these ´fireworks´ that had been recommended to us. This lasted all of 2 minutes when all of a sudden the ´house lights´ came up and everybody got up to leave.... we were like eh! That was it!!!! Talk about a disappointment we felt like kids!!

So I guess we had to out instead, lol, BUT my food & drink that night totally made up for the non-fireworks...yummmmmm...i had a banana & pineapple pizza that was sooooo sweet and sooooo good, and a cocktail with GIN, strawberry milk, coconut stuff, strawberry sauce nd some other stuff!! mmmmm thought id died nd gone to heaven haha!!!!!

The next day, Sunday, after a long discussion we eventually decided to go to Argentina (which I was particularly keen on cos my family had seemed really in favour of it) to see the Falls from the other side. But we had no tour guide so just had to jump on a bus to Argentina, how weird does that sound! But when we got there, after a lot of confusion about money & different currencies etc, we were just in time for the Grand Adventure leaving, which is a speedboat that gives you a kind of water tour of the falls. I was desperate to do it, but we´d heard that on the Brazilian side it cost 40 quid, so when we found out it was only 17 quid on the argentinian side i was like wow! First we got a kind of safari thing through the jungle on a jeep, which was cool, then got on the boat. It was such an adrenaline rush to be speeding through the river just below the falls, then we actually got taken through the falls themselves!!! obviously one of the smaller ones cos the bigger ones are just huger than you can imagine, but oh me what a feeling i absolutely loved it!!!!!! would give anything to do it again!!

The sun was shining brilliantly that day, so we dried out quickly and also got some really good photos. The photo opportunities aren´t quite as good as the Brazilian side but the experience itself was SO much better. Once we´d got off the boat, we caught the last train (by the skin of our teeth) to ´La Garganta del Diablo´ (the throat of the devil) which is a looooooooong trail along this skinny platform, that goes round the back of the falls and eventually ends up, literally, on top of the falls!!!!! I don´t know if everyone else felt the same but I felt soooooooo good, like we were on top of the world, being so close to the tumbling water that makes up one of the wonders of the world, well i don´t know if it officially is but it sooooo should be! Honestly I was just stunned by it, was by far the most amazing sight I´ve ever seen and will take a hellova beating. One moment in my life I´m never ever going to forget that´s for sure! Wow.

So there you go, my experience of a lifetime! After all that I was knackered!! We just spent the monday enjoying the hotel pool, and actually getting to sunbathe for the first time since we´ve arrived, woohoo! Got the bus back around teatime that night, unfortunately the bus was absolutely disgusting this time, didn´t bother me too much though cos I spent the whole time writing my journal cos I had soooo much to write about.

So now I can officially say we´ve been in 3 countries in 2 days!! Nuts!!! Oh and forgot to say, got a taxi from Argentina to Brazil haha!! Nah it´s not as bad as it sounds, we kinda got ourselves stranded in Argentina on Sunday night (well we didn´t think it was too ridiculous to expect a bus at 6.30pm...) so had to get a taxi over the border, but luckily turned out under a tenner thank gawd. But it sounds quite cool to be able to say that :P plus the fact that we squeezed through all the controls & customs etc with 4 of us squished into the back of a teeny car (and no-one even glancing at us)... so if you ever get the urge to be an illegal immigrant I´d thoroughly recommend paraguay!!

Now just getting back into routine which is never great after a holiday, meh, and missing steph´s birthday too so it´s a bit of a comedown, hmph. I´ve found a way you can text my paraguayan phone though, it´s from the internet and it´s completely free so let me know if you want to & I´ll give you instructions.

Think this is definitely my longest blog so far, my hands are getting sore!! So I´ll just say that the kids are still sooooooper and my family, when i actually see them, are good too, since that´s what everyone seems to be asking me lol! Last week we had a party in Alegria to celebrate ´Spring Day´ honestly they make such a HUGE deal of it here it´s ridiculous, but twas a lot of fun too! This weekend we´re going to Villa Hayes to visit Hugh & Emily, and there´s a procession on too which should be good.

Love & Hugs,

Lisa xXxXx

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